1.6. Organization of This Document

This document is meant to serve as a manual for first-time Debian
users. It tries to make as few assumptions as possible about your
level of expertise. However, we do assume that you have a general
understanding of how the hardware in your computer works.

Expert users may also find interesting reference information in this
document, including minimum installation sizes, details about the
hardware supported by the Debian installation system, and so on. We
encourage expert users to jump around in the document.

In general, this manual is arranged in a linear fashion, walking you
through the installation process from start to finish. Here are the
steps in installing Debian GNU/Linux, and the sections of this document which
correlate with each step:

Backup your system, perform any necessary planning and hardware
configuration prior to installing Debian, in Chapter 3, Before Installing Debian GNU/Linux. If
you are preparing a multi-boot system, you may need to create
partition-able space on your hard disk for Debian to use.

Perform the actual installation according to
Chapter 6, Using the Debian Installer. This involves choosing your language,
configuring peripheral driver modules, configuring your network
connection, so that remaining installation files can be obtained
directly from a Debian server (if you are not installing from a CD),
partitioning your hard drives and installation of minimal working
system.
(Some background about setting up the partitions for your Debian
system is explained in Appendix B, Partitioning for Debian.)